“I hope we find some swords and guns to fight with,” said Bunny to Charlie.

“Oh, there’s a lot of them,” Charlie answered.  “I’ve been here before and I know where lots of guns are.  Only they’re awful heavy.”

“Then we can pretend they are cannon!” cried Bunny.

“Yes, and we can make a fort of old trunks.  There’s a lot of them up here,” Charlie said.

They were on their way up the attic stairs, Charlie leading the way, as he had often gone up before.

“Don’t take all the trunks until we get out of them what we want to play with,” begged Rose.

“What’s in the trunks?” asked Bunny of his new friend.

“Oh, nothing but a lot of old dresses and things.  Rose most always dresses up fancy in ’em and pretends she’s a big lady,” said Charlie.

“Then that’s what Sue’ll do,” said Bunny.  “She likes to dress up.  But we’ll play soldier.”

Mrs. Preston’s attic was the nicest one that could be imagined.  In one corner were several trunks.  In another corner was a spinning wheel, and hanging here and there from the attic beams were strings of sleigh bells, that sent out a merry jingle when one’s head hit them.

Here and there, in places where there were no boards over the beams, were hickory nuts and walnuts that could be cracked on a brick and eaten.

“They’ll be our rations,” said Charlie, who liked to play soldier as well as did Bunny.

“But where are the swords and the guns?” Bunny asked.

“I’ll show you,” said Charlie.  “They’re just behind the chimney.”

In the middle of the attic, extending up through the roof, was a big chimney.  It could not be seen in the rest of the house, but here in the attic the bricks were in plain view, and Charlie said, on cold Winter days, when it snowed, it was warm in the attic because of the heat from the chimney.

Just now the boys were more interested in the guns and the swords, of which a goodly number were hanging on rafters and beams back of the chimney.

“Oh, what a lot of guns!” cried Bunny.

“And they shoot, too,” added Charlie.  “I mean you can pull the trigger and the hammer will snap down.  Course we only use make-believe powder.”

“Course,” agreed Bunny.  “But we can holler ‘Bang!’ whenever we shoot a gun.”

“And we can each have a sword.”

So the boys began to play soldier, sometimes both being on the same side, hunting Indians through the secret mazes of the attic, and again one being a white-settler soldier, and the other a red man.

Meanwhile Sue and Rose were playing a different game.  They had found some old-fashioned and big silk dresses in some of the trunks, and they at once dressed themselves up in these and made believe pay visits one to the other.  The two little girls talked as they imagined grown-up ladies would talk when “dressed up,” and they had great fun, while on the other side of the attic Charlie and Bunny were bang-banging away at one another in the soldier game.